Die Hard 6 gets a screenwriter and title

It looks like Die Hard 6 is happening. And, er, it has a title as well...

Well, they said it'd happen. Before the critical panning of A Good Day To Die Hard, it was already pretty common knowledge that plans were afoot for at least one more Die Hard movie. And whilst in some areas of the world, Die Hard 5 struggled at the box office - not least the US, where it didn't even break $70m - the film has gone on to make just over $300m worldwide. Die Hard 6 it is, then.

The first news of the project has popped up over at Total Film too, and that includes the title. The working name of Die Hard 6? Die Hardest. We do not make this stuff up.

The script is being written by Ben Trebilcook who is currently working on martial arts action movie Knockout. Whilst working on that he was introduced to Larry D Webster, who was consulting producer on the latest Die Hard movie, and subsequently landed the writing job.

It will be interesting to see if Trebilcook continues down the path of having John McClane as a kind of bizarre superhero or instead returns to the roots of the franchise and have him go back to being the rough around the edges everyman we all knew and loved. In fact, just to have John McClane back in a Die Hard movie would be a real step in the right direction. The character we've seen in the last two films at least has been a pale shadow of what he once was.

Trebilcook plans to have his treatment story start in New York and end up in Tokyo. He told Total Film that "there are many hurdles to leap yet and two of those are called Bruce Willis and [producer] Alex Young. There's the possibility producers might go back and find find some other source material to base the next one on, like they did with the first and second. Mine though, I feel it could be the Rocky Balboa of the Die Hard franchise.”

May we present, if anyone's interested, our formula for saving the Die Hard franchise right here. We'll have more news on Die Hardest as we hear it.